


And water delivers

by etiquettedarling



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gift, I became quickly obsessed with this couple don't look at me, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 11:33:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1106325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiquettedarling/pseuds/etiquettedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m Annie” her eyes fixate on a vibrant landscape painting of the ocean at sunset and she says “You’re very young to volunteer” the formal phrasing is gluey on her tongue and it’s obvious she’s repeating something a parent has murmured to her, or near her, or at her.</p><p>He leans forward, distracting her wide green gaze from the painting and holding it with the twinkle of his own “Don’t worry about me Annie, I’m just that good”</p><p>---<br/>How Annie crept up on Finnick</p>
            </blockquote>





	And water delivers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atardisonacloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atardisonacloud/gifts).



> Happy late Christmas Sam! also I entirely blame you for the small obsession that has been born about this ship due to writing this. It was just meant to be a drabble DAMMIT!
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Annie Cresta is very quiet.

Especially for a 11 year old.

As per tradition, the tributes are given an hour for people to bid them good luck, or farewell, before they hop on the train towards the gleaming metropolis and beacon of civilisation that is The Capitol.

Annie arrives towards the end, gangly and big eyed, peering at him like she’s trying to size him up, like she’s going into the arena with him.

Her friends, who are much gigglier and have already started developing crushes, have sent her in on a dare, but Finnick doesn’t know this.

“Hi” she says, like it’s a very serious question

“Hello” he replies with a grin “I’d introduce myself, but I don’t think it’s necessary” he throws a wink her way and she considers it before glancing around the lush room.

“I’m Annie” her eyes fixate on a vibrant landscape painting of the ocean at sunset and she says “You’re very young to volunteer” the formal phrasing is gluey on her tongue and it’s obvious she’s repeating something a parent has murmured to her, or near her, or at her.

He leans forward, distracting her wide green gaze from the painting and holding it with the twinkle of his own “Don’t worry about me Annie, I’m just that good”

(This is not the first time Finnick meets Annie. That incident involves a group of 9 year old girls shrieking and barefoot at the docks as wiry 10 year old boys fling fish guts at them. The sun is setting and the smell of them, left over from the mornings fish market, is positively awful. One not yet gangly girl with large green eyes and a tinkling laugh, picks up a handful of the entrails, miss aims and they land instead on the tribute training uniform of the observing Finnick Odair. The kids call him fish guts for weeks afterwards. That’s the first time they meet, but the reaping day of the 65th games is the first time they speak)

The next time is on the train into the Capitol 5 years later.

It’s always harder in years that the training academy decides they won’t be sending a volunteer. There’s an unsettled kind of restlessness in the crowd. A silence that seems close to hostile as the blue wigged man flourishes a hand and draws out a name.

Annelle Cresta.

She’s visibly shocked, clothed in a new green dress for the occasion which is a size or two too big for her and makes her way up to the stage with little steps. Her hands come up to wring and fidget for the walk. They’re by her side resting on the fabric of her dress by the time she reaches the stage. Her gaze, still as striking as it was 5 years ago, peers out at the crowd without really seeing it, knowing no one is going to volunteer to save her.

…

Finnick is lounging in the dining cart dressed in a pair of soft silk pyjama pants and an unbuttoned shirt by the time the two tributes walk into the room. Mags is chewing absently on one of the delicacies. They always have the same conversation as they wait on the train, divvy up the tributes between them.

Everything about the male tribute demands that Finnick choose him. He’s not a volunteer but is 18, works on the boats, knows his way around a hook, is physically strong, and classically attractive. The kind of meat The Capitol guzzles up the minute they see it.

When he talks to Mags, all he can see is green eyes and the tinkling laugh of a child hurling fishguts at sunset. It’s hardly anything to go on, but he can’t shake it from his head and decides that he’ll look after the girl.

Annie.

He’ll look after Annie.

…

The last five years have softened her a little. She still peers at him thoughtfully but it lacks the shrewdness of her 11 year old self and her body lacks the harsh lines of a pre teen underneath her too big dress. He usually expects the female tributes to be filled with fear, unearned pride or misdirected crushes. There is fear in her eyes (they are still rimmed with a redness that only makes them greener) but any regard she has for him seems to fall under ‘quiet contemplation’.

He’d be lying if he said it didn’t put him a little on edge.

“So Annie Cresta” he says, dropping himself into the lounge nearest her, he’s casual, friendly and she shifts in her seat a little bit “what exactly are we working with here?”

“I’m a good swimmer” she answers carefully, thoughtfully. Her eyes dart away and settle on a window and the scenery that rushes past outside “I can set traps as well”

Finnick leans back and observes her in her seat, she’s moved her hands and he thinks for a second she’s going to start wringing them again, instead she fidgets. He notices in a vague sort of way how long and elegant her fingers are. Annie Cresta could be a musician with those fingers, she could run them through a child’s head of snarled hair and untangle it without making them cry, but neither of those things are useful in an arena so instead he thinks that Annie Cresta will tie knots with those fingers and sets about testing her on them for the rest of the train trip.

…

She gets polished and preened and waxed by three terrifying looking prep people and the scraggly sun damaged ends of her hair are made soft and shiny by the process. For some reason, it makes Finnick frown a little. She apparently can’t stop running her perfectly manicured fingers through them and its proving to be a distraction.  

“You seem sad here” she says it in the thoughtful way she says most things yet somehow still seems ungrounded and flighty as the words come out of her mouth.

“Well if you go through this interview with me again I promise I’ll cheer up”

She looks at him and for a second the shrewd 11-year-old she once was is in the room with him before she shrugs and sits upright, pulls herself into something resembling good posture and tries to force a smile.

...

At lunch their escort mentions in passing how the entirety of District 4 smells like fish guts and Finnick sees Annie’s eyes ghost over to him, can somehow feel the flicker of a suppressed smile crossing her face.

One little giggle passes her lips and she immediately brings her hand up to cover it, apologises, and looks very intently at her plate for the rest of the meal until she’s shuffled away to learn how to walk in heels.

He hasn’t heard her laugh for a long time.

…

Her interview, well, it doesn’t go badly.

She’s calm, and thinks about what she says which lets her stand out amongst over eager and nervous competitors. It’s not that she’s poised exactly, there’s something about her that remains unrefined, but she’s not without elegance. She manages not to fidget and her dress makes her look like a shimmering fish caught in a net.

The visual makes Finnick a little uncomfortable, he has to remind himself that statistically she won’t win. She’s too small, not as aggressive as she could be.

...

She looks truly terrified for a fleeting second the morning of the games. She’s about to walk away, into the hovercraft where she will be tracked and dropped into the arena, they’ve only just reached the tarmac and Annie Cresta turns her wide eyes on him. He has the vague thought that they’re too green to compare to the ocean as he registers just how fearful she looks for the first time.

It’s what makes him promise her that he will bring her home.

“You’re just that good?” She smiles, and it seems sad.

…

The brutal beheading of the district 4 boy (in a petty argument that had spiraled out of control within 2 minutes of it occurring) actually causes the closest thing to a gasp to occur within the mentoring station in as long as Finnick has been there.

The District 5 mentor, the one who’s worked his way through to his 3 bottles of wine in the 6 hours he’s been sitting next to Finnick swears under his breath and adds with a nod towards Annie, who is now covered in the blood of the fallen tribute “Your girl’s going to fucking lose it Odair”

And she does, maybe 10 seconds later when she realises how much blood there is, or sees the severed head sitting a foot or two to her left. It all falls into place in her brain and she lets out a blood curdling shriek. Her hands shake and she tries to wipe them off on her pants but they’re also soaked and it’s mostly ineffective in the half second where she gives it a try. Without glancing back at the remaining careers she bolts.

She doesn’t stop running for 20 minutes and she’s tired, tripping and stumbling on undergrowth, falling into the trunks of trees for the next 10.

She’s dead.

Finnick repeats it to himself.

She’s dead.

There is no way she can win in this state.

Annie finally collapses to the ground, mouth open in a scream that makes no sound, eyes livid and staring at a fixed point in the distance and she slowly brings her hands up to cover her ears against a sound no one else can hear.

…

She can swim.

It’s what he thinks as an earthquake floods the arena.

She’s lying flat on her back, a little battered, eyes still staring at something no one else seems to see. Annie is under fed, but she can swim. The blood caked on her clothing, in her hair and on her skin leaches out into the water like a bruise surrounding her immobile form. She chuckles vaguely at nothing and then falls silent until the last cannon fires 4 hours later.

That shot of her, facing the sky surrounded by the blood of her district partner makes it’s way onto every piece of promotional material they produce following the games.

Someone calls her “District 4’s very own Ophelia” in some outdated but obviously very academic literary reference. The kind that is designed so that no one really understands it.

The head gamemaker is discreetly relieved of his position and Finnick hears about it in the bed of the man who will be replacing him.

…

He’s there when she first wakes up at the medical center by complete fluke. He and Mags have been trading off every 6 hours while she sleeps and he’s two hours into his shift when she blinks her eyes open. She’s still so thin that they seem unnaturally huge in her sunken face. Finnick thinks about how much the prep team is going to love it.

“You’re up” He smiles at her, hoping she’ll respond. Her eyes don’t move from the spot she’s picked on the ceiling and she whimpers, bringing her hands to her ears. The same terror is in them that he remembers from the last time he saw her in person but there’s something detached and manic about it now “It’s okay Annie”

He doesn’t know what to do, brings one hand up to her wrist to gently guide it and her eyes snap to his. She looks like a caged animal, like she’s trying to figure out if she can gnaw her arm off to get away from him so he lets go but maintains the eye contact.

“You’re not in there Annie, you’re in the hospital, you got out”

She doesn’t respond, her eyes remain fixed on him and her hands are still placed firmly over her ears.

When she does look away it doesn’t take long for her to dissolve into hysterical shrieking. With speed she shouldn’t be capable off she tries to rip the tubes from her arm and jump out of her bed. Finnick blocks her easily his arm wrapping around her waist, his shoulder anchoring him against her. She almost deafens him by screaming into his ear. A nurse administers something that knocks her out and Annie crumples into her bed, a little whimper of protest is the last sound she makes before unconsciousness claims her.

Finnick drops back into his seat as she is tied with restraints.

“We’ll give her a few more days” The nurse’s voice is touched with something like concern, but she follows the statement up with worry about how she’s going to come across during the interviews before she strides from the room, eyes raking over a chart.  

...

When he switches out with Mags, his brain won't stop reconstructing the sounds of her shrieks, and thinking about how it felt like they were been ripped from her frail broken body as she fought against his.

...

The next time she comes to the sedative they’ve got her under keeps her hazy to details. She gives one attempt to move her hands against the restraints but gives up almost immediately. Peering out at all the white in the room, Annie searches for something solid to focus on and zeros in on sea green eyes that are looking at her from a short distance away.

Her tongue is heavy and she clumsily tries to form a name.

Everything feels very far away, part of the issue of being unable to properly focus on anything. A warm hand slips into hers. She follows the arm that’s attached to it up to broad shoulders, which leads to a neck which leads to a jaw and eventually those sea green eyes again. She remembers thinking they were a beautiful colour years and years ago, but they look so sad now, and she can’t find the words to say it.

Instead her mouth fumbles around the phrase “Just that good” and she drifts off again.

…

Her interviews are very brief once she’s finally removed from the medical centre.

No one really enjoys watching them.

…

The entire train ride home she spends curled as small as she can make herself in her bed, sometimes she shrieks and shrieks and can’t be silenced.

Finnick grows used to it as he walks down the corridor outside her room. The first few times he tries to get her to calm down but it’s fruitless. He feels stupid and useless after she’s had to be put under by a medical professional who he distinctly doesn’t remember being there on the train ride into The Capitol.

…

When they get back to district 4 the welcome home is fairly subdued. Everyone is happy they have a victor but behind the applause, and her father sobbing as he embraces her at the train station there’s the hum of a hostile silence in the humid air. A silence that Finnick feels in the pit of his stomach. A silence that says ‘this is not right’ as Annie’s knees buckle and she heaves gigantic shattering sobs.

Finnick shouldn’t have expected anything different, it never feels like a victory.

…

It seems like a cruel trick of fate, that the Victors are all delegated a houseboat on the prettiest wharf in the district. Finnick expects to watch Annie be dragged to her new home, screaming in that way that tugs at his chest as she realises that she’s doomed to be surrounded by what almost killed her in the arena.

…

He sees her one day, standing on the deck of her home, gazing curiously down at the water that laps against it. She doesn’t look scared, it’s such a small victory but he feels relief rush over him just as he realises he’s staring at her.

Maybe it’s because he only just noticed it but she seems to be constantly sitting on her deck from that point on. Mags joins her a lot and Finnick eventually makes his way to the boat as well when the pair are shucking oysters.

“Hope I’m not interrupting” he says to the two women, Mags places her knife on the deck so that she can reach out and pat his cheek affectionately, Annie shrugs and looks very carefully at him as he sits down.

“You don’t look sad here” she says it with a distant but warm smile and not for the first time Finnick feels thrown by Annie Cresta.

“Sea air works miracles”

She shoots him a look at that, similar to the one she had used as a child, but older, more tired, and somehow kind. It’s a look that says ‘that’s not what I meant and you know it’.

Finnick doesn’t really have a chance to think about it too hard because Annie’s knife slips and then the palm of her hand is wet with vibrant red blood. She doesn’t shriek but the colour drains from her face and she doesn’t seem to be breathing.

“Annie” he says half pushing out of the seat he has just taken “Annie it’s ok, you’re not back there”

She eventually brings her hands to her ears against some sound that’s too terrifying for anyone else to hear and makes herself as small as she can in her deck chair.

Mags signs something around mumbles about how Annie needs her hand to be washed, that the smell of blood is only going to make her worse and eventually Finnick picks her up, takes her to the bathroom and pries her bleeding hand from her ear.

He mumbles himself then. Small promises and reassurances. She’s fine. It’s just a cut. When she’s bandaged up and he’s leaning forward to wash blood from her ear, there’s a moment where she grabs his forearm with her uninjured hand and looks at his eyes like she’s trying to find something. He stares back at the desperation there, his hand is by her ear and their faces are close. She wants something from him but he can’t tell what. She eventually lets go, brings her hands to her ears and curls back up again. Finnick carries her to her bed and she gets out of it two days later.

…

She arrives at his front door, her long fingers pick absently at the bandage that still swathes her hand and he notices that the ends of her hair have started to look scraggly again. It’s fresh, the bandage, and Finnick wonders if Annie did it herself, or if Mags was there to help.

“Mags said you helped me, when this happened” she thrusts her hand out slightly in front of her “she says that I cut my hand shucking oysters?”

“Yes” he says “you don’t remember?”

“I thought I was back there” her voice is very small “I can’t really remember much about it”

He looks at her thoughtfully, his face pulling into an expression he so strongly associates with Annie is strangely comforting.

“Do you want to know what happened?”

They sit in his living room (identical to hers except that it’s got 5 years worth of wear on top of it) and he talks her through the events of that afternoon, how she reacted, word by word. She seems almost relieved that she didn’t shriek this time.

“It felt like I was screaming” she explains looking at the bandage again.

Finnick nods fairly before he moves on to how she grabbed his arm in the bathroom.

Her eyes snap up sharply to his again.

“What?”

“I remember that”

“You do?” A lump has formed in his throat, it’s not a feeling he’s used to and Annie’s eyes boring into his are not helping matters.

Her expression softens after a minute, a little private smile crosses her face and she glances down to her lap.

“I thought I made it up”

…

Shucking oysters on Annie’s deck slowly begins again, Madge and Finnick do most of the work. Annie still isn’t comfortable holding a knife, but brings a short length of rope with her and practices knots instead. Sometimes they talk, Finnick tells a funny story about Chaff from three games ago, Annie explains that her Dad sometimes makes jewellery out of the broken shells they can’t sell to the capitol, how she thinks she’s going to start making the same, for her talent. Sometimes Annie gets lost in her own world, drops her length of rope and laughs at an odd time in the conversation. Sometimes she brings her hands to her ears.

Finnick learns to talk her out of it, he sits down in front of her and speaks gently, tells her about how they’re going to eat oysters for lunch, that she’s not in the games, anything really. It reaches a point where his voice calmly rhythmically lulls her out of her fear. One day, as the Victory Tour grows near he rests a reassuring hand on her wrist when she brings her hands down. She responds by covering it as best she can with her own hand and then looks at him thankfully. She seems tired.

…

Finnick gets a phone call a few weeks before Annie is meant to be going on her victory tour. Only one person ever calls him, so the sound of the ringing in his home makes his blood run cold.

Snow informs him that he will be returning to the capitol the following weekend, he doubts there will be time for him to attend Annie’s victory banquet. He is going to be immensely busy. He knows he should be used to it now, but it still makes his tongue feel too thick in his mouth.

“How is Miss Cresta?” Snow asks in a serpentine voice, it makes his skin crawl, he can smell the blood and roses through the phone.

“She’s recovering”

“With your help of course”

Finnick doesn’t want to answer, doesn’t want to think about what he’s trying to suggest, to threaten, but the words “Yeah I guess” are released tightly from his clenched jaw.

“It’s nice to see you’ve taken so passionately to your duties as” there’s an imperceptible pause before he says “ _mentor_ ”

…

Annie comes over an hour after he hangs up the phone, she’s got her rope knotted around her wrist and he looks down at her hands as she walks onto the jetty that leads to his boat. He’s sitting on the edge and every now and then the water rises and brushes the bottom of his feet.

The sun is setting.

It looks beautiful.

“Oh” her feet stop suddenly and she totters in the same position for a second or two “You’re sad again”

It’s not a question and he feels her sit down next to him. Their legs don’t touch, but she’s close enough that he’s aware of her body heat.

He feels sick.

Her hands dance around for a second, flutter like they don’t know quite what to do before she rests one comfortingly on his forearm, an imitation of what he had done for her a week ago. It stays there for a moment, resting on him, before she brings it down to hold his hand, entwines her long fingers with his. Her other hand joins them and he stares down at the visual of her fingers encasing his hand.

In one shuddering moment, he allows himself to understand Snow’s threat, understand what this means, understand what it is he feels. He brings their hands up and places a kiss on one of hers.

She responds by shuffling closer and leaning her head on his shoulder. The gentle pressure stays there as they watch the sun dip below the horizon in silence.

…

Finnick watches as much of her victory tour as he can from his penthouse in The Capitol. She seems shaken, disoriented. In District 7 she stops talking for a good 20 seconds and looks down in surprise to see that she’s holding cards. In district 2 she slams her hands over her ears in the middle of the eulogy and has to be quietly removed from stage.

He has the sickening suspicion that they’re sedating her heavily whenever she gets on the train.

The TV stays on when he leaves the room. He passes an Avox, allows the sickened feeling to get worse for the entire elevator trip and then works a Finnick Odair smile onto his face as he crosses the lobby.

The young woman with bright green hair down to her knees who is organising his ride almost looks like she’s going to pass out with joy at the prospect of breathing the same air as him so he shoots her a wink.

He does not think of green eyes when he walks out the door.

He does not think of elegant calloused hands or the softness of a head resting on his shoulders.

He does not think of sunsets.

Fuck.

_Fuckfuckfuckfuck._

The worst day is when she’s in The Capitol, he watches her interview with Caesar Flickermann as a blue haired woman covered in shimmering silver tattoos drapes herself on his shoulders. Cassia. Her name is Cassia. The woman states her distaste with the victor.

“If only she had been as perfect as your are Finnick Odair” Cassia is a new one, she’s starstruck and can’t stop referring to him by his full name. She tiptoes her fingers across his chest and he pulls her in for a kiss.

“Well we can’t have that” he says (his brain is screaming unintelligible things about how perfect he isn’t but he’s well versed in tuning them by this point) “she’d be stealing all of your attention from me”

He tries not to think of how overwhelmed she was, how Caesar had tried to coax her out but his bright red wig and makeup had looked so much like blood Annie had paled and couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but sit with her hands over her ears, try to draw her knees up to her chest in her restrictive dress.

He feels sick on the drive back to his penthouse suite.

…

Annie has a plan, comes up with it in the weeks she’s home from the victory tour while Finnick is still at The Capitol. It’s not hugely detailed. There’s only one or two steps to it really, but it exists, and she’s written it down to make sure she doesn’t force it from her mind on those days where she thinks she’s stuck in her arena, when she feels the rain like splatter of blood on her skin again even though she’s safely in District 4.

_(she’s not in the arena, she’s not in the arena)_

The plan is this:

The day Finnick gets home, she is going to kiss him.

Because she’s fairly certain she’s in love with him, and he deserves to be kissed by a person who loves him.

She considers adding more to the plan (is she going to be waiting at the jetty outside his boat? Will she run up to him or walk?) but the details get fuzzy when she over thinks it and the only thing that remains clear is that she is going to kiss him. She wants to kiss him, and she loves him.

She remembers a time where she would spend so long being uncertain about things. Finnick has not been one of them for a long time.

She is going to kiss him.

The day before he gets back she smooths down the piece of paper that has this written on it. A quiet feeling of expectation washes over her.

Then she hears it.

A thud.

Then another, and another and she can see blood and smell it and taste it on her lips, she’s going to be sick, she’s going to scream.

She can hear screaming, hoarse and hysterical, but she’s not sure if it’s her. Her hands are jammed over her ears and she’s staring at the head of her District Partner, Lucas Anchor. It smiles at her before being joined by each of the tributes from her games. All of their heads tumbling down onto the dirty blood covered ground in front of her.

…

When Finnick gets home Mags is waiting for him at the train station. He doesn’t have any luggage so he strides easily to her side, linking an arm through hers. She mutters through a  half closed mouth about the goings on in the District, talks about Annie on her victory tour and finally lets him know she’s had a bad couple of days as they reach Victors Wharf.

“Is she okay?” He’s not sure the answer is going to help at all, and Mags shrugs, knowing no response is going to be sufficient, gestures towards Annie’s jetty and hobbles away.

He walks over, feels panic rush over him. It’s nothing he hasn’t done before, Annie having a bad day, but it’s been so long. He’s terrified he won’t be able to help.

Her father is in the kitchen when he walks in, looking sleep deprived and sick with worry and Finnick feels his stomach plummet.

The older man looks at him with the same slow consideration his daughter has before the words “she’s in her room” cross the space between them and he’s taking the stairs two at a time.

She’s in her bed, tiny and curled in a ball. It’s like she’s gotten smaller since he left. He knows without pulling back the quilt that’s been tucked around her that her hands are up next to her ears. He ducks down so he’s on his knees and at eye level with Annie. It doesn’t make a difference, though her eyes are open she isn’t there. Her hair is wet and he can smell the ocean on her.

“Annie?” he starts “Annie, I’m home, it’s ok”

His voice keeps up a low rhythmic stream of words and slowly, after what feels like hours she seems to register someone else in the room.

“I went swimming” her voice is hoarse in the same way it was just after the games, when she had tried to say his name through the haze of sedatives “They think I-” the words die in her throat and she starts again “I was just trying to wash off the blood”

“I know” his voice shakes, her hands are still by her ears, but are relaxed there, not pressing down on them so she can hear him “I know you wouldn’t-” he can’t say it. Still on his knees he reaches across the bed offering his hand, Annie looks down, surprised and moves her own to give it a bit of a tug. He climbs in with her and settles in, hand still in hers, their bodies not touching.

“I might” Annie says fairly, something in her gaze changes and she’s no longer looking through him “I don’t want to, but I might”

He breathes her name once at the admission and feels a physical ache tug at his chest. At the sound of her name she focuses her eyes at him like she’s just remembered something important.

Looking small and defeated she glances down at their hands, rubs her thumb over his wrist with purpose and speaks very quietly “I was supposed to kiss you today”

He’s thrown by it for a second before she tugs his hand again and pulls herself into his chest, buries her face into him. The smell of salt water in her hair is overpoweringly like home and he can feel his body curl over hers so that his nose is planted in the top of her head. He lets himself think that they fit perfectly together. Even with the blanket separating them. They fit.

They fall asleep like that, Finnick still wearing his shoes and coat, Annie still damp in her sea sodden dress.

He wakes up with her arms wrapped around his torso, under his jacket, in more or less the same position he fell asleep in. Pulling back, he looks down at her as she sleeps. Large bags under her eyes. Her hair still bedraggled and half damp. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable but he worries momentarily, touches the back of his fingers to her forehead, her cheek, runs a thumb across the delicate line of her jaw.

The last touch wakes her and she looks confused for a moment before his face swims into focus. Her eyes soften on him and she pulls her hands out from his coat and perform her own examination of him.

Her fingers run through his tousled hair, he’s reminded of something that had occurred to him on the train ride with her to The Capitol but she then moves to feather light touches across his cheekbones and jaw at it falls by the wayside. He watches her face as she does this, thoughtful, careful, taking in each individual feature she touches. She stops focusing on his jaw and just looks at him, a quiet sort of happiness overwhelms her face, her eyes crinkle around it and the words “you’re home” barely escape her lips before she’s silencing them by pressing her mouth against his.

Finnick feels himself sigh into the action. There are probably a million logistical things he would worry about if Annie were a client. Morning breath, for one, but it reminds him that this is real, and this is Annie. Annie who smells of sea salt and thinks long and hard about if she wants to kiss someone and decides that the person she wants to kiss is him.

She scrambles a little at the front of his chest and he pulls her tighter, he wants as much contact with her as he can get with layers of clothing and bedding between them. They stay like that for a while crushed against each other, kissing, their heavy breathing the only sound in the room.

Annie pulls away, rests her forehead against his and breathes out a smiling sigh.

“I missed you”

“I missed you too”

She feels warmth spread from the place their foreheads touch.

Outside the sun rises.

His eyes don't look sad anymore.


End file.
